International law has become a bogeyman in American judicial politics - conservative Supreme Court justices denounce it, Republican senators regularly grill court nominees about its dangers, and some states are trying to prohibit their courts from considering Islamic Shariah law or any legal rules from abroad.

"You never get bored. The issues are always changing," Donoghue, the only U.S. judge on the International Court of Justice - also known as the World Court - said in an interview on a recent visit to the Bay Area, where she grew up.

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There are some problems, like pollution of the oceans, that "we can solve better jointly," she said. Besides, she asked, "how can we order our life without international law? How can we fly to another country without international law? How are international adoptions handled without international law?"

Donoghue, 59, who has served on the court since September 2010, said she's been fascinated by international legal issues since college days at UC Santa Cruz, where her senior thesis examined "comrades' courts," the Soviet Union's network of citizens' tribunals.

Court appointment

After graduation from UC Berkeley's law school, Donoghue worked briefly for a private law firm but quickly migrated to the State Department and spent most of her career there. She was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's deputy legal adviser when Donoghue was nominated by the United States and confirmed by the United Nations to the 15-judge World Court for a term that runs through February 2015.

The court was established in 1945 as an arm of the United Nations and is the oldest of a proliferating group of tribunals overseeing international legal disputes.

The court, which meets at The Hague, has the weighty task of resolving legal conflicts between nations, like boundary disputes, disagreements over extradition and whaling treaties.

Although the court has no army or other means to compel compliance, recent studies show that the losing side accepts its rulings 75 to 80 percent of the time, Donoghue said. But her own nation has not fully recognized the court's authority for more than a quarter century.

The United States was once an ardent advocate of international law and the tribunals established to enforce it after World War II.

But U.S. officials defied the World Court in 1985 when it ruled that President Ronald Reagan's administration had violated international law by mining Nicaragua's harbors and arming and training the Contra guerrillas who were trying to overthrow the Central American nation's government.

U.S.-court tension

The court awarded Nicaragua $17 billion in damages, but Reagan refused to pay, and his administration vetoed Nicaragua's attempt to enforce the award in the U.N. Security Council.

Since then, the United States has denied the court's authority to enforce claims against it by other nations. But U.S. representatives still argue cases brought under a number of pre-1985 treaties that designate the court as the arbiter, and also take part in cases that seek advisory opinions, like last year's decision backing Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Donoghue said she can't talk about the Nicaragua case, on which she worked during her early years in the State Department. But she said the United States has taken part in more cases before the court than any other nation.

One treaty case, Donoghue said, showed that U.S. leaders continue to recognize that the nation has a stake in the credibility of the court and the laws it interprets.

In 2004, the court ruled that the United States had violated the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to notify more than 50 Mexican citizens, who had all been sentenced to death, of their right to contact their consulate for legal help after their arrest.

President George W. Bush's response was twofold: He withdrew the United States from the court's authority over that section of the treaty in future cases, but he also ordered states to comply with the ruling by holding new hearings for the prisoners. Bush's own state of Texas refused, and in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the international tribunal's decision was not binding on state governments.

The first execution took place less than five months later. The Supreme Court balked again this July when President Obama, citing the World Court ruling and the possible impact on foreign relations, sought to halt another Texas execution.

Nuanced position

Despite its outcome, the 2004 case, as Donoghue observed, reflected a U.S. posture that was more nuanced than defiant. As the World Court acknowledged in its ruling, the State Department has made extensive efforts to notify local police about their duties toward imprisoned foreign citizens.

"If a U.S. national was arrested overseas and not given access to a consular official, and a miscarriage of justice occurred, it's easy to imagine how our government would react," Donoghue said.

Still, many legal commentators argue that the United States has damaged its authority to urge global adherence to human rights standards by disavowing the World Court's binding authority and refusing to join another tribunal, the International Criminal Court.

"When we say we don't have to participate or comply with international bodies and other people do, there's a kind of hypocrisy in that," said Jenny Martinez, a Stanford law professor who once assisted a U.S. judge on an international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia.

Donoghue observed that three of the other four permanent U.N. Security Council members - Russia, China and France - have also rejected the court's binding authority over them, and the fifth member, Great Britain, accepts the court's authority with reservations.

Although she hasn't considered any cases involving the United States, her first case as a judge involved a dispute arising from the 2008 military conflict between Russia and Georgia that had implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Georgia's lawsuit accused Russia of human rights abuses. The court dismissed the case in April, saying it lacked jurisdiction because Georgia had not taken up the issue with Russia before going to court. Donoghue dissented, saying Georgia had made its concerns clear before suing, and expressing concern that the court was creating procedural barriers to future cases.

Though her opinion came down on the side that the United States also supported, Donoghue said she doesn't consider herself or her colleagues to be mere mouthpieces for their homelands.

"Judges are human beings, products of their life experiences, but judges don't always agree with every position of their country," she said. "I consider myself accountable to the whole U.N."

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